Agriculture is the backbone of Africa’s economy. It accounts for 70 percent of full-time employment in the continent. About 70 percent of the population of Africa and roughly 80 percent of its poor live in rural areas and depend mainly on this sector (agriculture) for their livelihood. It is therefore obvious that anytime Africa’s agriculture fails to perform adequately, the majority of its people inevitably fail to meet their basic food, health care and other needs. The trouble is: the performance of the continent’s agriculture has been continuously disappointing for decades.
Technologies and processes, which have dramatically increased agricultural yields everywhere over recent decades have been poorly transferred and used in Africa. The overall picture is one of technological backwardness. For example, the share of area planted with modern plant varieties in Sub-Saharan Africa stands at a poor percentage of 27 per cent compared to 82 per cent in Asia, 52 per cent in Latin America and 58 per cent in Middle East and North Africa.
The fertilizer use in the region stands at a poor level of about 20 kg per ha and per year compared to 73 kg/ha in Latin America, 100 kg in South Asia, 135 kg in East and Southern Asia, and 206 kg in the industrial countries. Of the 874 million hectares (ha) of Africa^s land that is considered suitable for agricultural production, about 83 percent have serious soil fertility or other limitations.
Africa uses only 4.4 % of his total water resource base for irrigation. In sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest part of the continent, the percentage of arable land that is irrigated is barely 3.7 percent, which compared poorly with 7 percent in Africa as a whole (40 percent of the total irrigated areas are found in North Africa), 10 per cent in Latin America, 29 per cent in East and South-East Asia and 41 per cent in South Asia.
Cereal yield average in Africa is 1230 kg/ha. This compares poorly with 3040 kg/ha in Latin America, 3090 kg/ha in Asia and 5470 kg/ha in the European Union.
One-third of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished. Eighty per cent of all Africans live on a daily income of less than US$ 2; nearly half struggle tosurvive on US$1 a day or less. The daily per capita dietary energy supply in Africa currently stands at a poor estimate of around 2300 kcal per day and percapita compared to 3500kcal in the North America(USA included) and Western Europe.
There are about 854 million people who are chronically or acutely malnourished in the world. The majority of these people are in Asia, but Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the prevalence of hunger is over 30 percent, and where the absolute numbers of malnourished people are increasing. Moreover, Africa is the only continent where hunger and poverty are projected to worsen in the next decade.
Josephine Kachabe of Tiki Mwiinga village, Gwembe District in southern Zambia, eats wild pods and roots. Even thesewild foods, many of them toxic, are in short supply in Zambia this year. (Photo by Michael Huggins courtesy WFP)
Africa leads the world statistics on the major health problems. Eighty (80) per cent of the world infectious diseases are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. More than 72 per cent of people infected worldwide with HIV/AIDS reside in Africa. Malaria alone reduces the GDP of SSA by one percent every year, kills two million people every year in Africa and accounts for about 10 and 25 per cent of direct and indirect child mortality, respectively. Tuberculosis, a disease of the poor, has re-emerged, is reinforced by drug resistance and is causing havoc throughout the continent. Many other ill conditions exist which worsen the overall health picture. Among these are Onchocercociasis or River blindness, African trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness, and nutritional disorders.
Most of the hundreds of thousands of children who die from malaria every year are under the age of five. Almost 90 percent are from sub-Saharan Africa. (Photo: Cris Bouroncle)
Boy suffering from sleeping sickness caused the parasite which causes on chocerciasis by trypanosomes transmitted by tsetse flies (river blindness).
An elderly man infected with onchocerca volvulus, This man shows nodules, skin changes and blindness, all manifestations of the disease.
Woman caring for her comatose husband who is dying of African trypanosomiasis, Uganda, 1990.
Overall, the situation mainly fueled in Africa by a disappointing agricultural performance is one that is characterized by a downward spiral of hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, diseases and civil strife.
